Good Morning y'all. 42° on the front porch this morning, sunny and very wet.Going up to 59° today. The Military is into major maneuvers at Joint Base Dix, Maguire, Lakehurst.. And I can hear the "Fire for Effect" some 30 miles away. Once the Armor starts blasting away, we will also feel it.
The wife is a bit under the weather today, feeling the effects of her 2020 Season Flu shot on Thursday, and her Shingrix shot yesterday.
Tom: I like your ingenuity coming up with a solution to the coupler pocket problem. Kadee # 153s are my standard, eventually everything will have the Kadee scale coupler with the shortest practicable shank.
Patrick: Pizza is also what we had last night. I can still "taste it".
Willie: The vinyl decals look great on your road. Really make a difference. Desktop, eh? To tell you the truth, if I still had the space available, that's what I would go with. The 23" screen is an incentive. The laptop was great when I needed the portability, but now, it just takes up space on the kitchen table.
The wife's new medication retails for $5900 / month (+ or - small change). Insurance carrier alleges they discount that to 4,000 / month. Good Rx shows a wholesale of $2,000 / month and a cost to us of about the same as insurance. Catch is the Insurance price we are quoted is a co-pay of $70 / month, per the contracted co-pay for a Tier 5 medication. The insurance carrier invokes a benefit payment of $4,000, which automatically throws us into the donut hole, something the insurance carrier should disclose, so there are no issues at the retail pharmacy. To further muddy the water, the donut hole price, is 25% of the medicare price or $302.37, meaning the Medicare wholesale cost is $1209.48 / month. So there is a huge amount of mark-up involved here, and the Plan Manager (MedImpact) gets to pocket the difference...and sluff off the cost of the more expensive products to Medicare. This just further reinforces my complete hatred of the Insurance Industry.
Interestingly enough, it's easy to fall into the donut hole, (i do it by October each year), but hard to climb out. The criteria to "fall in" is around $4K in drug expenses including plan payments, co-pays and any aid or promotional discount. To get out, one needs to spend an additional $ 2350 in medical out of pocket costs to put you into Catastrophic Coverage, which significantly reduces the monthly cost to the consumer. It's also interesting to note that once in the donut hole, the drug manufacturer discounts the cost by 70% and the insurance contribution of the insurance carrier is roughly 5%, and the end user gets to pay 25%. Oh yeah, You still have to pay your monthly Part D premium to the scumbag insurance company. In a calendar year, the wife will go into the donut hole the first purchase of the month, and go in to Catastrophic Level by September.
Considering that it's enrollment time, through December 7, We can change our part D plan...Trouble is so far neither Humana or United Healthcare will even tell me what drugs are covered until I sign up...Got a few more to check out. The agents probably don't know, and are more interested in up-selling me to a Part C Medicare Advantage Plan, most of which limit my treatment options and selection of providers to a network, rather than anyone. I had enough of cost sharing / cost containment with my healthcare policies while employed in the railroad Industry.
FL9 waiting for its next assignment in New Haven, CT. October 1969. Hal Smith Photo. Note the PRR painted E8s (EP22), in the background. Glorious Penn Central days.
Have some work to do today to complete my warehouse. Photo promised when done.